Brighten your load, Lighten your footprint

When we say “shopper” what springs to mind? Perhaps boxy tartan driven by the OAP blue rinse brigade? This is a lingering association with shopping trolleys in the UK, but over here in Spain every man, woman and teen strolls nonchalantly around with their shopper. There are even spaces to park them securely with a chain at the local supermarkets. In Paris we saw with our own eyeballs, the chicest of ‘cheries’ perusing the aisles of Monop’ in gorgeous heels and a natty shopper. When our founder Melissa Fretwell bumped into Paul Marchant at a startup networking thing, she was keen to find out more about his mission to build a sustainable shopping bag brand. 

“Most entrepreneurs start with a problem. I'm gonna solve my problem that affects me and therefore other people have that problem. I think a lot of businesses come from that. Mine didn't. Mine came from the fact that I needed to do something and I didn't know what it was and I didn't know what the business was. So, I gave myself three parameters. One, I wanted a physical product because I've been working in the abstract for years. Two, I like the idea that I give someone something and they pay me. I love that. And that was born out of the fact I was annoyed when I worked in adland that the big brands took 120 days to pay us. I still have nightmares about that. And then the third one, and it's in the third position because if the other two don't work, then number three doesn't count at all anyway. At some level, I would like to add something positive in terms of impact to the planet.”

"At the moment, there's an embracing of things that aren't traditionally seen as cool. Look at Crocs".

Yes everyone at White Camino is puzzled by the success of these monsters.

“Stanley Cups made for workmen, now the kids use them. More people are living in urban lives therefore their decision making is different. Less people are driving and the price of fuel is skyrocketing. Kids are actually taking less driving tests. We're seeing them being bought by young adults because they don’t break the bank, are handy at university in their student towns where everyone gets the bus. So, I think people sort of self-select themselves and realise it's right for them. 

My favourite example of this was when I was checking the sales figs and there was a sudden surge of purchases. It turns out that Noel Gallagher's daughter Anaïs Gallagher had bought a Ströli and she'd done a thing on TikTok about it. She was literally talking about why she's got them and the fact that she doesn't drive. She lives in London and uses public transport when she goes to the shops. I mean this was everything. I couldn't have scripted it better if I tried and it was random.” Social proof right there!   

“The size of the market says yes, there's a market. You know, there's 1.2-1.3 million Google searches for shopping trolleys in the UK. Now that's an increase by 30% over three to four years. The shopping bag market as a whole, trolley, bags, and all that sort of stuff, it's worth half a billion quid. It's dominated by cheap and generic products. There's no brand that owns the space. and with my marketing head on, I'm like, that's something to play for.

Then you look at Europe and it's even bigger and there's regulatory tailwinds like the removal of plastic from our society. So, everything sort of fits. And then the next bit is you go, well, can I even do this? And then you have to find manufacturing. And that's a whole other conversation for another day. When you find manufacturing, you get some test products. If they're any good and I can do it from a recipe made from recycled materials and the quality is right, can I make my margin? Yes, I sort of can. At the moment, I'm running on about 57% gross margin. I really need to get to about 64%. Once I increase volume  and hit that I can start to save on the amount of shipping from changing from a 20 foot to a 40ft container. The classic economies of scale”.

There’s always so much pressure for new businesses to grow. Do some people expect you to do a bit of an Ed Sheeran and be global in a year? 

“I get told I'm too slow and I'm just like, I'm moving at the pace that my budget dictates I can move at. I could move much quicker. If I got my £250 grand in the bank right now, I'd be opening in the Netherlands and I'd be upping my production run.”

“If you are going to change perceptions, you've got to do something distinctively different to your common or garden shopper. So we chose the bright colour palettes and memorable strapline: “brighten your load”. We evolved the design of the whole unit, for example, it's got funkier wheels and there's a different shaped handle than standard models. There’s also a handy zip pocket on the back of the bag to keep your cards and cash and an easily accessible water bottle carrier on the side.

We’re expanding our range moving into larger bags, beach stuff, and off-road wheels. People use them for picnics and going to the beach, fun things like that. Then obviously we can play with different patterns as there’s a decent-sized space to work with. Everything we do will have a slight twist. The new polka dots that are coming out evoke the freshness of polka dots, but on closer inspection are not quite a standard dot. We're looking at some weird and wonderful animal prints and some retro 70s patterns.

At the risk of sounding ridiculous, I'd love to do a partnership with someone like Heineken and you just wheel out a green trolley full of cold lagers ready for your barbecue.”

We can see that. Heineken brand managers take note. 

“We're made from recycled materials. Everything on the frame is obviously recycled and the bag is recycled. So it can go into a recycled bin and then end up being processed.  When I've sold one to someone. I don't want to see that customer again. And I mean that in a really, really nice way but I want yours to last for life. There's no point in trying to be sustainable and removing plastic from society if the product you're creating doesn't last.

At this moment in time I can't yet say send me your frame back and we’ll use it, but becoming completely circular is of course the dream.” 

“I'm always looking for investment because someone at some point is going to sit up and listen and go, Bloody Hell. I want to get £200 to £250,000 to push further into the UK and launch in Europe. 

What I'm doing at the moment is really building the engine. When I built my agency it was a very different way of building a business. I mean I've never been in the fundraising world and all that sort of stuff. I hated networking despite being a social person. Then in this product led world I actually do need money to do it because it's a very different sort of business. I can prove there is traction for Ströli and product market fit that investors are looking for but the world is changing around us. The fundraising world 10-15 years ago (before my time) was apparently a lot easier to navigate. You could raise capital off an idea, without an insight and data rich pitch deck. 

Anyone that's launching a business, needs to have some money for ads. I know this from my marketing and advertising days. You need to set yourself parameters and fix budgets so you can experiment fully. There's an entry level for doing stuff. One of the beauties of digital marketing versus the noughties when you'd spend a fortune on press, is that now you can target highly effectively and you can reach a lot of people much more cost effectively. There is a level of spend that you don't go below otherwise you're not putting yourself in the market enough and it’s a waste of cash. For the UK, I think the base sits at about £2,000 a month on that.

My two guiding metrics are Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) and Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). So when I started mine was 0.4 ROAS in my first month on say on the 1 of September. So I'm losing 60p per pound spent. That's fine. I've seen this journey a million times in my ad agency. You stick and you optimize every month. You look at where your traffic is coming from. You look at how people are going through your website. Where are the barriers? Change the colour of a button. Every little incremental little update changes the positive effect of what you have. Then in month two, my ROAS was 8. So I'm now losing 20p per pound I spent. The following month was 1.05 or something like that. So I'm now making 5p for every pound I spend. 

Obviously nowhere near getting my money back for all my products and everything else. But then you follow that through for another two months. By the end of January, I was on a ROAS of over 1.51 and so it grows. 

I still love good old traditional outdoor media. I'd have a poster site perhaps at Leeds train station and just do something really fantastic on it. Or just an old skool gorilla marketing move and leave a Ströli outside a few choice shops with a gift tag.” And as we all know, great outdoor advertising feeds digital. 

“Obviously developing a retail channel is vital and our first retailer is now live. We're in Boundary Mills and they've made a really nice display. We're in the middle of their luggage section and there's coloured lights hanging down above us. It looks really eye-catching.” 

You got to have resilience, you've got to be persistent, avoid burnout, and all of that. This is parrotted a lot by self-help gurus who I don’t believe have lived experience. They have never really had to truly dig deep because they're not founders with everything riding on their decisions. So take advice from people who have done it, or exited. One of the hardest things is to plough on, to find a way through. And remember, if the figures don't stack up, never delude yourself either.”

And before we reach for our purple and orange Ströli to test out its 32kg capacity (approximately the weight of our office dog), over to Paul to the final words: 

“99% of people fail. And I'm not being in that 99%.”

If you’d like to find out more about Ströli, chat to Paul: paul@mystroli.com . 

We’re here to craft your story to reach new audiences and grow your brand for good. Drop Melissa a line if you’d like a free 30min confidential consultation: melissa.fretwell@whitecamino.com.